Home, Where the Heart Is
by Min Daae
Summary: Post-Home, with spoilers for Chosen. Angel grieves, contemplates, and is confused by his own feelings.


_I must go on standing/you can't break that which isn't yours. –"Apres Moi", Regina Spektor_

He was standing in his new office, looking out of the new tempered glass at the sun, when he felt Spike die.

It was a strange feeling, like a hole had opened up abruptly in his gut, and closed just as quickly, but left a hollow space behind where something had been before, something he hadn't even been aware of. Like a healed wound reopened.

Realistically, it could have been Dru, but Angel knew it was Spike, the shiver he felt all the way down to his bones. Gone. Dead. Ashes.

What did that mean for Buffy?

He left the offices in silence and went down into the sewers, the demon roads. He found a nest of vampires and killed them all. The Kaltogh demons were harder; one buried a claw in his gut, and another nearly took his head, but they died too. He stood and stared at their corpses.

In a year of loss (years of loss), why should this one come as a surprise? After Cordelia, after Connor…

He thought of Spike's scent mingled with Buffy's, the smell of intimacy. _He is in my heart. _Spike had a soul, Spike was working toward redemption. Angel could guess why. Not just because she had been his own reason.

Spike had loved Dru. He had always done anything, _anything _for her. That was how Spike was.

Why be surprised he would do the same for Buffy?

But he was dead now. Probably in a fight, yelling all the way down, the way he always would have wanted to go. At her side, where Angel would have wanted (_had the right_) to be. Maybe Buffy was dead too. (No. Not her.)

Angel slammed his fist into the side of the tunnel. The cement cracked, but so did his knuckles. The smell of blood was ripe. Was this how it felt to be flayed, one piece of skin at a time? One layer, Doyle. Two, Darla. Three, Cordelia, four, Connor…

Five.

(Why grieve for him. He was everything you hated.)

_Yes, but he was still mine. _

He wanted to go visit Connor; wanted to stand outside of the house in the suburbs and look in through the window at a real family, watch his son (not his son) smile and laugh and _live. _He wanted to sneak in through the bedroom window and watch him sleep, peacefully and quietly, dreamlessly. He wanted to go to school and watch him in class, with his friends, maybe with a girl.

He'll stay far away, here in the sewers, because that was why he sent Connor away, wasn't it? To get him away from all of this? The demons, the hatred…

Himself?

His father, the architect of his ruin, no matter how indirectly?

Something buzzed in Angel's pocket. Someone had realized he was gone. Angel pulled it out and resisted the urge to smash it against the demon corpses' body armor.

He started back to the firm instead. The claw wound in his gut hurt and it was bleeding heavily, but it wouldn't kill him. _Layers of skin, peeling away. _

He made his way up into Wolfram and Hart through the garage and stepped inside. There were doubletakes, and one triple-take. "Mr. Angel," said one of the crisply dressed personnel. "You're-"

"It's fine," he growled, and she backed down. He headed for his office. Wesley was there when he arrived, and his eyes went wide. Whatever Angel looked like, he gathered it wasn't good.

"What on earth happened to you?" The former Watcher asked. Angel took a breath through his nose. He didn't want to snap at Wesley. Not really.

He had so few people left.

"I fought a demon. Demons. They're dead."

"Any particular…"

"Reason? No." _My son is gone. My childe is dead. Buffy's cookie dough and Cordelia's a vegetable. _"Just felt like killing something. Evil."

Wesley glanced down, and Angel followed his gaze. It really did look bad, he reflected. "I'll get some tape," Wesley said, with an air of resignation. "Do you…"

"In the drawer, on the left, second one down. But don't bother. It'll heal. Why were you calling?"

Wesley drew himself up, slightly, and began to smile, just a little. "News from Sunnydale. Mr. Giles called. The Hellmouth is closed." Wesley hesitated a moment, and added, "Admittedly, Sunnydale also seems to have turned into a crater, but…"

_Good riddance. _"And Buffy?"

"Is fine. They're all…fine." Wesley looked relieved. "So it seems…that crisis is over."

_All fine. Except for Spike. But Giles wouldn't mention him. _"So it seems. No second front." Angel found a smile, and Wesley smiled back, seeming relieved. Then frowned, a little.

"Are you sure you don't want – I think that wound should be taped or sutured or something."

"It'll be fine." Angel was hungry, though. The blood lost was making itself known. Cordelia, he thought, would have insisted. Cordelia would have shoved him down and complained about getting blood under her nails even as she stitched him back together, and then would have heated a cup of blood and pressed it into his hands, looking furious the whole time that he had dared to get himself hurt.

Cordelia was gone. Cordelia had been gone for a year. "Wes," Angel said, abruptly. "Can I see Cordelia?"

Wesley blinked. "I don't know why you're asking me. I don't see why not."

Angel looked out the necro-tempered glass at the sun and thought about Spike, about Connor. About Buffy. _I can't see them. _"No," he said softly. "Neither do I."

~.~

The room Cordelia was in was clean, white, and simple. She would have hated it.

But then, Angel thought, she would have hated the machines that were keeping her alive even more. She should be complaining, she should be smiling, she should be alive. Not like this.

Angel took her hand. Her fingers seemed cool. "Cordelia," he said, softly. She didn't answer, of course. Her tenders had left him alone in here with her, and the quiet seemed overwhelming.

"I need you to come back," he said. No answer. Spike's absence was still a pit in his stomach (it will fade, it has to fade, soon). "I need you to…"

_You're going to lose them all, _something whispered in his ear. Fear, or maybe his demon. _It's only started. The rest will be gone soon. And then it's only you. _

"I miss you," Angel breathed. "I wonder…I wonder if you would remember. If you would know who Connor is. And if you would understand…"

Connor smiling. Connor laughing. Connor with a real family. It was worth the loss. It was, it _was. _

And Spike? What was he worth? (He was tired, so tired sometimes.)

Cordelia didn't stir, didn't blink, didn't gasp and open her eyes. Nothing. (In the end, wasn't that always what it came back to?)

Sunnydale was a crater. Buffy was gone. Spike was gone. Connor was gone. He felt lonely…

How had Spike gotten his soul? Where? Had it nearly driven him mad as it had done Angel, or had he dealt with it with grace? Would he have known Spike or would the other vampire have been unrecognizable? _You will lose the boy as well, _the seer had said in that other dimension, and Angel wondered which he had meant.

He had lost Connor, failed Connor. Had he failed Spike? Was there anything he could have done…

Pointless to regret. They were enemies, rivals. Bitter to the end.

The last dying shadows of what had been a family.

Angel squeezed Cordelia's hand. "I think I miss him," he said to her, quietly, because she could not hear or at least did not answer. "I think I miss all of them, sometimes. And I miss Doyle, and I miss Connor, and I miss you."

_I really do love you. _

_What are you going to do about it?_

_Prove it. _

He got up and left Cordelia quietly. The wound in his gut had healed; the ache of hunger had taken its place. He returned to his office and closed the blinds. He wondered if Buffy grieved. Undoubtedly. _He is in my heart. _

Everyone had scattered, and Angel had the sudden feeling that he was standing alone, and any way he stepped he would fall.

The sun was starting to set. He could feel it going down. Spike was still dead, and Wolfram and Hart loomed like a great dark maw around them all. Something coming, crawling under his skin. Angel sat down at his desk.

_For Connor, _he thought. _For all the lost. That's why I do this. _

He wondered if he could number Spike among them, or if he was something else, something other. _I'm tired. I'm tired, oh god, I am tired. _

_No rest for the wicked. _


End file.
